Thank you, Madam Chair.
If you ask me, this is absolutely astounding of the government, together with the NDP. I remember that when the minister was here, I guess it was last week, he said he had the brightest and best minds around the drafting of the definition. We've been talking about the definition and the importance of getting it right. The minister assured us that it was bang-on and in no need of any changes whatsoever, and any other changes would be just redundant.
What Mr. Virani is proposing here is not what I would view as a friendly amendment to Mr. Garrison's amendment. They do two different things. Mr. Garrison's removes some of the language, from my read of it, around “cisgender”, for example, and adds in “gender expression”. Mr. Virani's reinserts that language and maintains adding in “gender expression”.
Madam Chair, you can just interrupt me if I'm wrong on this, but I think I heard you say that if we adopt NDP-2, as amended perhaps, then CPC-1 would be dropped. For that reason, I do want to speak to CPC-1 really quickly because we won't get a chance to do so otherwise.
Because of the lack of clarity around the definition of “conversion therapy”, what CPC-1 would do, as opposed to NDP-2 as amended by the government, would be to explicitly say it's “as part of an effort to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.” I think we need to be clear that this is what conversion therapy is. It's an effort to change a person's gender identity or sexual orientation.
The amendment that the government is proposing further muddies the waters. I much prefer the amendment we're proposing, and for that reason, I would not be supporting the government's amendment.